


That Weird Time Between Christmas and New Year

by FrenchTwistResistance



Category: Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (TV 2018)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-02
Updated: 2020-01-02
Packaged: 2021-02-27 07:02:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22083076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FrenchTwistResistance/pseuds/FrenchTwistResistance
Summary: Liminal spaces and citrus fruit.
Relationships: Hilda Spellman/Mary Wardwell | Madam Satan | Lilith
Comments: 4
Kudos: 13





	That Weird Time Between Christmas and New Year

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place just after Midwinter’s Tale.

Hilda had almost forgotten what it’s like to have a baby in the house—the near-constant noise and need. There is always something to be done. If it isn’t feeding, it’s soothing, or it’s changing, or it’s reassuring Zelda, or it’s catching a moment in between for oneself. A constant eggshell existence.

And after having staved off an apocalypse and then having endured a seance. Well, it’s too many eggshells. Enough eggs broken to make plenty of omelettes, at least.

She hadn’t known exactly what kind of reprieve she required for the constant overstimulation—taut, raw nerves jumping beneath her skin, waiting for the next wail—but she’d certainly known a reprieve is required.

She kisses Cerberus. It’s something but not nearly enough.

She takes shifts at the diner. It’s something but not nearly enough.

She tries her best to keep it together, do what she normally does in her normal way. It’s something but not nearly enough.

Everything is something, and nothing is ever enough.

xxx

Hilda’s haggling the price of a half dozen pink grapefruit at the farmer’s market a few days before Christmas. The woman selling them is insisting she can get more money out of somebody else—a very specific but unnamed somebody else whose family makes a tradition of eating them on Christmas Eve—but Hilda’s arguing that the market is 15 minutes from closing and the person hasn’t shown up yet so has probably ordered the grapefruit from the marching band’s fundraiser instead. 

Suddenly there’s a weird heat beside her—not the regular heat of a regular body, but a particularly emanating, particularly hot heat of a body smelling of sulfur and iron and vanilla. She recognizes the combination from standing very near Mary Wardwell at an exorcism. 

The words she had been trying to form to continue to bargain die in her mouth, and her tongue is dry, glued to her hard palate in some combination of surprise and rather surprising dread.

A soft, low, lilting voice too close to her ear—so close she can discern moisture from the breath of it—says,

“I’ll pay the full price and a half.”

Hilda’s looking at Mary Wardwell’s tightly coiled profile—jaw muscles clenched, chin high, an errant curl tickling a cheekbone—so she misses the look on the seller’s face as the woman says,

“Sold!”

“Wonderful,” Mary Wardwell says. She gives the woman a wad of cash and then takes the brown paper bag in one arm. She hooks her other hand into the crook of Hilda’s elbow and leads them away toward the corn stand, but she abruptly halts in the middle of the aisle and removes her hand from Hilda’s arm, deposits the bag into Hilda’s arms.

“I just need the one,” Mary says, reaching delicately into the bag and procuring one grapefruit.

“But—” Hilda starts.

“You weren’t getting anywhere with her. And I thought I could do with having you owe me a favor.”

Mary turns the grapefruit over in her hands as she looks Hilda up and down and back up again. There is some danger there in her dark eyes.

“What kind of favor?” Hilda says, suspicious.

Again Mary’s eyes peruse her body—scan fitfully, catching here and there. And the danger is slightly more palpable with every hitch. Finally their eyes meet again, and Mary says,

“I haven’t exactly decided yet. But if you’d be so kind as to join me for dinner tonight, I might have thought of one by then.”

Hilda feels the weight of the five remaining grapefruit acutely. She also feels the weight of the invitation hanging in the air, almost as real. It’s something. But she hasn’t yet experienced it, so she doesn’t know whether it’s enough. So she says,

“Eight o’clock?”

Mary laughs, throaty and dismissive.

“Much too late to eat for an old lady like me. But if that’s the earliest you can get away, I can offer a nightcap instead.”

“How magnanimous,” Hilda says, just as throaty and just as dismissive. Mary raises an eyebrow, says,

“So a nightcap at eight.” She slips a neatly folded piece of paper into Hilda’s coat pocket. “I look forward to it.”

Mary disappears through the dispersing crowd. Hilda doesn’t look at the piece of paper until she’s got a few fresh venison steaks and leeks to her name, sitting in the drivers seat of her Crown Vic with the heater at full blast and the radio on.

It’s Mary’s address and phone number.

It’s something. It’s something different. She’s not sure what it is, but she is sure it’s not eggshells.

xxx

Hilda’s pulling at the hem of her tweed blazer as she listens to the chime of the doorbell. It’s one of those intricate doorbells that plays an obscure melody that goes on for much longer than a doorbell ought.

It’s 7:56pm, and Hilda’s at the address she’d been provided in her coat pocket.

The door swings open, and a wave of heat seeps out. A wave of cinnamon candle and pot roast and hickory wood in the fireplace scents. 

And Mary is standing at the threshold wrapped in an emerald green silk robe.

“I’m so glad you decided to come,” Mary says as she takes a few steps back, gestures for Hilda to enter.

Hilda takes three steps inside the corridor, and Mary has shut the door behind her and is helping her out of her wool overcoat. 

Hilda eyes her coat on the rack and then eyes the fire, the drinks set out on the low table between the armchairs and fireplace.

“You’ve gone to a lot of trouble—” Hilda starts.

“No trouble at all,” Mary says as she crosses to an armchair and sits. She gestures toward the other armchair, and Hilda takes the hint, sits. She folds her hands in her lap.

“Thank you for having me,” Hilda says.

Mary bends to retrieve a tumbler of whiskey and coffee and Bailey’s, presses it into one of Hilda’s hands.

“It’s my pleasure,” Mary says. She takes up her own glass and makes a cheers gesture. They both take a drink. And then Hilda sets her glass back on the coffee table:

“Well? Have you decided what I owe you?” 

Mary takes a larger slug and then places her glass next to Hilda’s on the coffee table.

“Yes,” Mary says.

“And what is it, then?” Hilda says.

Mary blinks. 

And Hilda smells that sulfur and iron and vanilla smell. So familiar and weird. It’s something. Is it something?

“Five pert, perfect grapefruit. Considering the season and the market value…” Mary says as she stares into the middle distance. But then her gaze turns. She peers into Hilda’s eyes. Mary says,

“I want you.”

Hilda returns the stare, says,

“Oh?”

Hilda hadn’t known exactly what kind of reprieve she has required. 

But an orgasm and then a full night’s sleep in a firm bed and a loose but warm embrace. 

It’s something. Maybe enough.

xxx

So many lights.

Hilda’s pressed against the passenger door of the Crown Vic. The car is packed with Sabrina’s friends, and Zelda is driving. They’re all on top of each other as they marvel.

Santa. Penguins. Angels.

A whole show, and they’re all enjoying it at 15 mph.

xxx

Mary Wardwell’s index finger is trailing up and down Hilda’s forearm. It’s a few days after Christmas.

And Hilda is lying on a rug in front of Mary’s fireplace, Mary propped up against her.

“Don’t you want to do something fun?” Mary whispers into Hilda’s ear.

“I’m not fun enough for you?” Hilda says.

“Of course you are. But.”

“What have you got in mind?” Hilda says.

“I’ll make it worth your while,” Mary says.

They exchange a look. But Hilda knows she is beholden to whims. And that’s why she’s subjected herself to Mary Wardwell in the first place. Impulsivity. Caprice. An appetite for danger.

“Let’s do it,” Hilda says.

xxx

The Isle of Lights ought to be all Santa and penguins and angels. 

But it’s now all pentagrams and Satan and Demons.

Someone has infiltrated. Someone has taken what has supposed to have been and made it into something else.

The dark and cold and a rearranging. Lights here, lights there. Not so much vandalism as contemporary art.

xxx

A hushed husky voice:

“Don’t you love it?”

Hilda sees herself, sees so many things. The lights flash around her.

“I do,” Hilda says.

Hilda perceives the lights around her configured and reconfigured into discernible shapes. She wants to apologize to those whom she’s hurt. She wants to make amends. She wants. And she wants.

And she wants.

xxx

The fire is roaring. A hiss a pop.

Mary throws a log onto it.

Hilda settles onto the rug in front of the fire, makes her apologies. A baby crying. So much else besides.

It’s something. Enough, maybe.

“You have so much more to give,” Mary says. “And I want it.”


End file.
